[Heidegger’s question]
“[I]n the end, hermeneutics will say, from where do you [Habermas]
speak when you appeal to self-reflexion [Selbstreflexion], if it is
not from the place you yourself have denounced as a non-place, the
non-place of the transcendental subject?”
[Neitzsche’s suspicions.]
“It is indeed from the basis of a tradition that you speak.
This tradition is not perhaps the same as Gadamer’s; it is perhaps
that of the Enlightenment [Aufklårung], whereas Gadamer’s
would be Romanticism. But it [ideological critique] is a tradition
nonetheless, the tradition of emancipation rather than that of recollection
[cf. Gadamer].”
“Critique is also a tradition.”
[But Habermasian critique is immediately reframed]
“I would even say that it [ideological criticism] plunges into
the most impressive tradition, that of liberating acts, of the Exodus
and the Resurrection. Perhaps there would be no more interest in emancipation,
no more anticipation of freedom, if the Exodus and the Resurrection
were effaced from the memory of [hu]mankind... If that is so, then
nothing is more deceptive than the alleged antinomy between an ontology
of prior understanding and an eschatology of freedom.”
[We have returned to Heidegger’s authenticity and understanding,
but now with greater hope, or with a self-liberating remembrance of
things past]
“We have encountered these false antinomies elsewhere: as if
it were necessary to choose between [Gadamer’s] reminiscence
and [Habermas’] hope! In theological terms, eschatology is nothing
without the recitation of acts of deliverance from the past.”